Denpa Shonen

The infamous DENPA SHONEN TV show has just broadcast its last show. A very popular show for 10 years, bits of it have been profiled around the world. When non-Japanese journalists have wanted to show examples of Japan’s wacky TV shows, DENPA SHONEN was usually a good pick. Known for its crazy stunts (a man locked naked in a room had to survive by entering magazine contests – he stayed there for a over a year), it actually became a victim of one of its own stunts (well, a few). They got into some political trouble recently when they disrupted a famous politician’s speech, and then got their network in trouble when they fooled some real TV stations and newspapers into thinking that a mythical Japanese creature was living in a forest. But the final straw was when, after their move to a new time slot on Saturday night last Fall, they said that unless they could get to a certain rating level they would stop the show. They didn’t make it.